My Miracle Baby - Navigating Surrogacy & Donor IVF
A Deep Dive into Sourcing an Egg Donor with Sam Everingham.
Jul 27, 2023
Sam Everingham & Kerry Duncan
When you stop and think about it, sourcing an egg donor is a really big topic. In our latest episode Sam Everingham, a respected expert in surrogacy and donor IVF, helps to demystify the process for you. We discuss the significant role of eggs in fertility, and even touch upon the logistical and legal aspects of egg donation in different countries. We delve into various strategies of finding a donor, from tapping into your own networks to exploring your IVF clinic’s donor database.
We unravel the financial aspect of egg donation, contemplating costs and their variances based on the type of donors and geographical location. We navigate through the landscapes of the USA, Spain, Greece, and many more countries, comparing their regulations and costs relevant to egg donation. Don't miss this episode if you're seeking to understand more about egg donation and surrogacy.
Growing Families was established by Sam Everingham in 2014 (initially as Families Through Surrogacy) and has assisted over 3000 singles and couples to engage in cross-border donor and surrogacy arrangements.
As an International Advisory Board creator Growing Families specialises in education, guidance and support on surrogacy and donation globally. It provides legal, financial, psychological and practical professional industry advice as an independent third party in a complex area to providers. Growing Families helps singles, heterosexual and gay couples on their family building journeys.
Contact Growing Families today to find out more about its confidential one to one consultations, holistic concierge packages and global events with guest speakers and industry experts from around the world.
When you stop and think about it, sourcing an egg donor is a really big topic. In our latest episode Sam Everingham, a respected expert in surrogacy and donor IVF, helps to demystify the process for you. We discuss the significant role of eggs in fertility, and even touch upon the logistical and legal aspects of egg donation in different countries. We delve into various strategies of finding a donor, from tapping into your own networks to exploring your IVF clinic’s donor database.
We unravel the financial aspect of egg donation, contemplating costs and their variances based on the type of donors and geographical location. We navigate through the landscapes of the USA, Spain, Greece, and many more countries, comparing their regulations and costs relevant to egg donation. Don't miss this episode if you're seeking to understand more about egg donation and surrogacy.
Growing Families was established by Sam Everingham in 2014 (initially as Families Through Surrogacy) and has assisted over 3000 singles and couples to engage in cross-border donor and surrogacy arrangements.
As an International Advisory Board creator Growing Families specialises in education, guidance and support on surrogacy and donation globally. It provides legal, financial, psychological and practical professional industry advice as an independent third party in a complex area to providers. Growing Families helps singles, heterosexual and gay couples on their family building journeys.
Contact Growing Families today to find out more about its confidential one to one consultations, holistic concierge packages and global events with guest speakers and industry experts from around the world.
Speaker 1:
My Miracle Baby navigating surrogacy and donor IVF a limited podcast series recorded and produced by growing families, sam Everingham and Kerry Duncan.
Speaker 2:
Hi everybody, welcome to our podcast about sourcing donor eggs. We've got Sam Everingham with us today, who is our host, but is also an expert in this matter, and he's going to share his knowledge and his advice for people who are seeking donor eggs. So thanks, sam, and welcome.
Speaker 3:
Hi Kerry, good to be on here again, it's great.
Speaker 2:
Fantastic. So it is a big topic and we heard in our podcasts. We recently interviewed Peter Illingworth. He's a director of IVF Australia. He told us that the egg in the fertilisation process really does most of the heavy lifting. It really has a biggest impact on fertility success and, as we know, eggs are really tricky to extract. They're a lot more onerous for women to donate than men. So I think that's one of the reasons there's not as many eggs around. It's a big thing for women to do and there can be weightlifts. So, sam, let's chat about that and where people go and wait times and even sort of donation around the world would be fabulous. So first question where do you go if you need donor eggs? What's the starting point, sam?
Speaker 3:
Look, I always tell you people, maybe look around your own networks first. I mean, unfortunately, a lot of people who need donor eggs are in their late 30s or 40s, and so usually their own friends and family are the same age, and it makes it harder. But if you do have sort of a friend willing to offer who is under the age of 30, ideally, then it's worth looking at, because it means you can do it locally. What's the next starting point, though, would be going to your IVF link and seeing whether they have a database of donors. In countries like Australia, we're short on the ground with donor databases. A lot of IVF links don't have those databases, so it can be hard, but it's certainly an option you can look at.
Speaker 2:
Okay and Sam, which countries do you think make it easier compared to others and more complex destinations for donor eggs?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, look, the rules around egg donation vary a lot globally. In Australia donors must be known, donors must have access counselling, must meet donor limits with families so it makes it harder to recruit and they have to be able to wish. They can't be paid in Australia, so that makes it quite hard, whereas countries like Spain and the USA, where donors can be paid, where there's a choice of anonymous or known, there's a lot more flexibility there. So they have much greater pools of donors who are younger and as a result, you know, much greater success with their eggs. So it does depend a lot on the country's own regulations. In this space, the size of the country, I mean places like the US and Spain, large populations, so we have plenty of donors available.
Speaker 2:
And since that means, for example, an Australian woman, they can send a surrogate and go overseas and collect an egg from overseas and bring it back, have it shipped back to Australia.
Speaker 3:
No, so that's. Another complicating factor here is that importing eggs has also got rules around it. So if you're going overseas, the only eggs, for example, that can come back to Australia need to meet Australian requirements. They need to also be taking some a donor who agrees to be altruistic, who agrees to want to go counselling, meet family limits and so forth. So it makes it quite hard. So many women who do want what we call a fresh donor cycle go overseas to do that, but they're not able to bring the eggs when it goes back to Australia.
Speaker 2:
Okay, I understand there's a European database of egg donation. Is that right? Can you tell us a little bit about that, if you know much about it?
Speaker 3:
So there's some large companies in Europe that do have, if you're like, egg banks where you can register on there for their database, and there's a number of countries around the world know what companies I should say basically USA and Europe that do have quite large databases of egg donors. Many of those are frozen eggs, where they've actually recruited donors ahead of time and they've had those eggs frozen and you can buy a sort of a batch of frozen eggs. And some of those Egg banks have deals with clicks where they can ship those eggs to the clicks. The patient can go direct to the egg bank and say well, I like to look at this donor, could I use this click or could I come over and make inbrews with at the egg bank? So there's a number of options there that can be looked at. And that's where we get to the point.
Speaker 3:
Also, what's the difference between fresh eggs and frozen eggs? So there's a greater availability of frozen eggs and they're a bit cheap because they've been sort of made before, whereas fresh eggs what we have to do is take an egg donor to the IFF clinic and harvest two eggs and make the embryos straight away with her with their eggs rather than freezing them, and that's a more successful technique likely to result in more embryos, because the thaw rate for eggs is not so good. So while it's more expensive to do it, a lot of people do prefer to use fresh eggs to make those embryos.
Speaker 2:
You know it's a bit about cloth sand around the world. Some of it's altruistic. Obviously there's no payment involved. Oh, they probably use, actually still a cost. Or someone can donate their eggs and that's altruistic, but then to use them involves money, I'd imagine.
Speaker 3:
Well, that's right. So I mean, even in a country like Australia where it is altruistic, you're still paying for the administration and for the egg donors, travel costs and for the what we call the pickup. So I mean the costs. Even in altruistic setting you're still going to be a good $5,000 US at a minimum, or maybe 7,000 Australian, and then you've got the cost of making the embryos. It will be not uncommon, if you're buying frozen eggs and importing them to a country like Australia, that you'll be paying $15,000 at a minimum for those eggs to come in before you even made the embryos. So there's quite significant costs up front there.
Speaker 3:
Eggs coming in from countries up the USA are even more expensive.
Speaker 3:
You know you might be paying sort of $25,000 for a batch of eggs coming in from the USA.
Speaker 3:
So there's what significant costs involved and as a result, a lot of people do choose to actually travel themselves overseas to clinics where they can actually engage with an egg donor, make the embryos for a far lesser amount. So what we're saying here is they might only have to pay $1,000 for the eggs when they're over there and maybe they pay sort of $5,000 for the whole cycle overseas. So we see, typically we see foreign nationals going to countries like Spain in Europe, like North Cyprus, like Czech Republic, like Greece, because the cost of the IVF there, on the egg donors, is significantly less than in their own countries. Those who need an egg donor and a cyborg have got to be careful, though, because for those kind of people, a lot of those countries I'm talking about don't have surrogate programs. So if you make the embryos, for example, in Spain or Czech Republic and you need a surrogate, you have to then take them to another country for where the surrogate is, so the logistics of that can get complicated.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely Senko. We run through those countries you just mentioned and all the main countries where people go for collection or egg donation and say whether they're known or unknown.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah. So look, countries like the USA, which is a popular destination, has a choice of known and anonymous donors, but it's much more common for donors there to be anonymous, so it's harder to get donors who are or call identity release. Identity release means that the donor will agree to have her record shared with your child when the kiddies are 16 or 18. In countries like Spain and Greece, the donors are all anonymous there, and the same for Czech Republic. Cyprus has a mix of donors. Places like Ukraine have a mix of donors. In places like Georgia, we're seeing donors who always have to be able to do release. We're also seeing now countries which have access supply of donors, if you'd like, like Ukraine, where they're actually shipping those frozen extra. Countries that have a shortage, like Australia and like the USA. So companies where the donors are available are saying okay, we'll ship these in batches so they're available for your patients, for doctors, to click to use.
Speaker 2:
That's great. So is that allowed in Australia? I know in Victoria that VARTA is very strict on importing. It's probably different around different states, so in Australia, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
Certainly. There's one US donor program called World Egg Bank which is expensive but is allowed in all the states in Australia. Eggs come in from other countries like Ukraine or Georgia, for example. It's very strict and there's much fewer clinics that have those available in Australia. Maybe two or three of the big clinics now in many of the states have access to those donor eggs. So it doesn't depend on the clinic. It's worth shopping around and asking growing families or asking a clinic about what access they have to donors, because the ones that have done deals, if you like, done partnerships with those overseas programs. It gives their patients a much better option, if you like.
Speaker 2:
It sounds like it's very complex. In some ways You've got the World Bank donor, but then there seems like there's lots of other programs and registries of donor eggs.
Speaker 3:
There are, so there's a number around which could be very confusing. The other issue which is hard for people in terms of managing risk is, while these companies will guarantee you a certain number of eggs and they'll often say that they'll guarantee of those eggs that you'll make at least one or, if you pay more, at least two day five embryos, they won't guarantee that those embryos will result in a pregnancy or a birth. So you can be paying significant money for these donor eggs and then not have success with them. So there are risks there that people need to be aware of is that we're not guaranteeing success.
Speaker 2:
And how about in terms of managing the amount of eggs that someone can donate and then even recording it? So someone decides that they take a donated egg and they might have a child, and then that child could have 15 siblings, for example. How does that get controlled globally?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, look, it's a really interesting question that, and unfortunately, in some countries there's no control over that.
Speaker 3:
I mean places like the USA. They don't have rules and regulations around the number of times you can donate, and so there are a lot of families where there would be half siblings spread around the country or the world. Places like Australia tend to be much more regulated and be more strict, and they will say look, the law says in our state that you can only donate to five families, or someone of 10 families. One of the troubles they had, though, is policing that, because the donors might not declare they've donated to another link in another state or another click in the same city even, and so it can be very hard to police these kinds of rules as well, so it does make it difficult. There are some programs where you can pay a premium in order to get an egg donor that's not given to anybody else, where they'll say OK, this egg donor is just for me, so that's another option. That's done in the state sometimes, but you're paying a lot of money for that kind of an option.
Speaker 2:
So, given that complexity, sam, this is probably a really challenging question. What do you think could be done to regulate in this space? It still gives people choice, but helps to control that potential problem.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, look, it's a really hard question.
Speaker 3:
That is your global regulation in this area, because you're relying partly on honesty and you also don't want to interfere too much in people's lives.
Speaker 3:
But the other issue we're seeing is there's so much global travel occurs now, where people are prepared to travel internationally to seek donor eggs, that the other control information there is difficult and different countries have different norms around what they feel is appropriate.
Speaker 3:
For example, a country like Greece would never feel it's appropriate to have a known donor. Culturally that's not accepted, whereas here in Australia, where the opposite, where we feel that the child's right to be paramount about having access to that donor's information. So getting countries to agree on what's, if you like, correct is an impossible task because of these different, different cultural norms. So I think we're never going to come up with a sort of a standard set of rules across the world. But I think it's up to the individual patients and telling parents to really be comfortable themselves and the decisions they make and make sure they can ask the egg donor agency or the IVF clinic exactly what their policies are around how many times the egg donor is allowed to donate a way of going to, so they can have some transparency and have something to tell their kids.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I know with Greece that, as you said, it's definitely unknown donors. That's kept confidential. But if there is an illness, I understand you can go to the court, apply for a court order to disclose some information about medical histories etc.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that's right. And actually Greece has just brought in a new rule that does allow people to import embryos to Greece if there was a donor they knew used, as long as it wasn't a blood relative. So Greece is suddenly relaxed with laws that have been in that area as well.
Speaker 2:
Egg donor babies. So we've had a couple of interviews in our podcast, sam, where women try and persist to using their own eggs, perhaps in their 40s, and statistically it's less likely to succeed. Just to reassure people from the ones that we've interviewed, everyone says the same thing that once you're born with your baby, they don't know of any women that have a problem with that or any couples, and just want to see if you want to add anything to that, sam, in your experience.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it's a good point. Could we do get some resistance amongst many couples, even singles, about coming to terms with donor eggs because they think, oh, I really want to have my biology there. And at the end of the day I say to them often it's a choice between really do you want to have a family or do you want to require them to use a donor. And, as you say, of the hundreds of women we've worked with over a decade now, While some of them are worried about bonding with that child, there's never been any issue when it comes to bonding, despite the lack of genetic connection, Because the babies in their arms from day one and it's the babies they've longed for that, I suppose peritol instinct kicks in, Sometimes not immediately, but certainly pretty quickly, and I would encourage any woman who's concerned about that. They can speak to some of the parents who've been through the egg donor process to reassure them that there is a pathway forward there and that connection is real and they're there forever because you really are that parent from the baby from day dot.
Speaker 2:
And Sam, you had your beautiful twin girls. Exactly the same thing with an egg donor yeah that's right.
Speaker 3:
That's right. So my partner has no genetic connection to the kids but certainly feels just as connected as I do to those girls.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely Sam. Which country do you think has the best model for egg donation?
Speaker 3:
Oh look, that's a hard one, because we're talking here about weighing up the need for adequate supply of donors versus the rights to child issues. There's countries, like Canada, for example, which are similar to Australia in that you can't pay donors much, so there's a shortage of donors there. I think the model that we countries need to have ideally is to be able to allow their citizens to source donor eggs from a wide range of environments. Countries which allow sort of shipping of eggs into the country I mean the USA comes to mind probably is the ideal place for egg donation because there's such a wide variety of donors available there. They'll accept embryos coming into the country which use a donor. You can send embryos out of the country where a donor was used to some environments.
Speaker 3:
The main issue with some of the US connections is the cost. It can be high, but we do have many, many attending parents coming to us who are from different cultural backgrounds. They might be Asian or they might be Indian and they're looking for donors that background. A lot of the world struggles to find donors of those different ethnicities. The USA has a big country and they're able to pay their donors. They tend to have donors available who might be Asian or Indian, for example, Whereas if you're looking at India itself, for example, the strict rules in India about being able to export a donor to the embryos or any embryos out of India. So someone who's an Indian background is sometimes forced to go and make the embryos in India and to the transfer in India if they want an Indian donor and that's sort of obstructive for some people.
Speaker 2:
And that would be similar for most of the Asian countries, would it? Yeah, yeah, you would Ireland et cetera.
Speaker 3:
There is a program in Malaysia where Malaysia will allow you to make embryos there and then ship them elsewhere. So it does vary a bit by the country, but certainly two of the big hubs now in Asia for ectonation are Malaysia and the Philippines.
Speaker 2:
Nice, Wow, Okay, Gee, it is a complex area, isn't it? I think again I know I say this in most episodes it really does pay to get the right advice, unless you know someone who can donate to you. That's fabulous if you've got that option. It sounds like it makes sense to get the right advice because you've been so well.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, we've got a couple at the moment, for example, who were Australian couple, and one of them, the intending mum, is Asian descent. So they really love an Asian donor. Because those Asian donors aren't available in Australia, they're looking into making those embryos in the Philippines and they could then have a surrogate also and again, surrogates are sought in Australia. They'll probably ship those embryos to a country which does have a surrogacy program, such as Argentina. So we're really seeing these intending parents make really what we call a global baby, where there's been ingredients for creators around the world.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's amazing. Wow, thanks, Sam. I was always just to finish off any general advice you have for IPs, looking at any donation.
Speaker 3:
Look, I think you need to understand that making good quality embryos is the crucial part of this, and so we do see a lot of intending parents who spend a lot of time and emotional, financial energy trying with their own eggs will enter their late 30s and 40s and that's got problems because it can lead to lots of heartache.
Speaker 3:
So some people are prepared for that and they say, no, I'll try, and I think I'll try with my own eggs. Some stage people do need to draw the line in the sand and say, look, it's not working. Now Do we have a plan B? Are we prepared to go to a plan B of donor? And I think that's a conversation that people need to have early on. They need to think of their finances here too, because you can spend a lot of money on Trying unsuccessful cycles up front with no success, whereas if you, if you, go to donor, there are even some programs we're done as used without guarantee you success, because they've got such good donors on the databases and if you use one of them that we call a proven donor, which he's done this before and it's worked, I'll say, well, look, we know this don't is so good that we know we're gonna get a baby at the end of the day, so people need to consider those kind of things when they're planning.
Speaker 2:
Fantastic, and we should mention Mel, who we interviewed recently. Sam and she's a. She donates eggs. She's donated many of her eggs and she's also been a surrogate, and so it's it's interesting when you look at it from so many different Perspectives. She got so much joy from donating and helping to create families where people otherwise couldn't. So it makes me just think of her and many others like her who have donated.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, it is great we do have people out to seek donors, like Mel, who are sort of out there, who have happened to donate eggs. You know there's women like that around the world, but it's just be able to connect with them. With some it's a key thing. So the more we can do to help people connect with those donor groups and ages are better.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, fantastic, okay, so I think. Thanks, sam. I think again, the general recommendation is reach out for help from someone to get some advice for your homework up front and, of course, growing families is here to help. So maybe reach out in contact Sam and someone here in his team.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah, we do have a egg donor coordinator in the team these days because it's such a big topic for people, so we have someone who specializes in that area who can help, particularly in tending mums who are grappling with the donor issues, and we, the new status we run, often have stories about egg donor journeys for women too, so they're good resource to have a look at as well. Thanks, sam. Okay, please carry.
Speaker 1:
We hope you enjoyed this episode. For further information, please head to the growing families website, wwwgrowingfamiliesorg.